Here's the official announcement of the just revealed plan to release Duke Nukem Forever on May 3, 2011 in North America, and May 6, 2011 in Europe. This includes word on how to qualify for the demo: "Players looking to get access to the Duke Nukem Forever playable demo before it is publicly released can join the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club. A membership certificate for the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club is included within the Borderlands™ Game of the Year edition, where customers will be able to experience the definitive, value-packed collection of the critically acclaimed and best-selling Role-Playing-Shooter that has captured the imagination and attention of single-player and cooperative gamers around the world." The press release is accompanied by new Duke Nukem Forever screenshots (along with the box art), as well as the Duke Nukem Forever "reveal" trailer, which includes gameplay footage from the shooter sequel. The clip is embedded below after you show your ID to our vigilant digital doorman.

Beamer wrote on Jan 22, 2011, 01:11:For the type of AA people want you will not see on an HDTV. The reason why you're seeing the issue right now is that the engines are cutting corners. A more powerful machine won't have to cut these corners. It'll have more effective ways of doing it than costly AA.

AA is actually very cheap compared to rendering in higher resolution. (eg. to get the same amount of visual comfort as a render with 4xMSAA at 1080p, the render without AA has to be rendering at 7680x4320) The reason why AA was so expensive in previous gen GPUs was because the hardware wasn't built for it. With latest development such as nvidia's coverage based techs and ati's screen space based AA (which incur almost no framerate hit) it can only get cheaper.

What would help out more here (assuming this isn't the style you're going for), AA or a faster engine that allows for smaller, better built pieces?

My 'not-an-expert-in-any-of-this' layman answer would be 'both'. In the extreme example you posted, obviously a better engine that could display more polygons would have a more noticeable effect than AA, but in a normal console game, I can easily spot the lack of AA. I'm not even sure why this is an argument. I don't know the science of it, but when I see my friends playing on their consoles while sitting on their couch, the lack of it is usually pretty obvious.

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Jaggie heaven. Why? Because it's made up of large pieces. What would help out more here (assuming this isn't the style you're going for), AA or a faster engine that allows for smaller, better built pieces?

What you're basically talking about is higher resolutions. Lower resolution = fewer pixels. Fewer pixels = larger pixels if the image is stretched to fit your entire screen. Fewer pixels + larger screens = even larger pixels. HDTVs usually have large displays. When a console game renders at 1280x720 (or less, as is growing increasingly common these days) and has no AA, that results in large pixels and thus, lots of obvious aliasing.

Yeah, because a picture the size of my thumb is a good measure. Looking at that little thing from normal distance is still smaller than how I see my TV and I can see jaggies all over the place.

I find this need to "prove" things on this silly. I know a lack of AA is noticeable on an HDTV from 8' away or so because I can tell when there is no AA on an HDTV 8' or so from me. There is no need for research or documents on the matter, I can look at it and know, the proof is seeing it with my own eyes. Infamous was a jaggy mess.

Exactly. All of this bullshit from overly defensive platform warriors aside, it is easy and demonstrable to see on any HDTV from near and far distances. There's a reason the Xbox and PS3 support hardware AA but unfortunately the rest of the video specs have fallen behind the times. Given how ludicrously powerful actual modern video hardware is, there's no reason we should not see hardware AA in next-gen consoles and AA in many titles.

If you want an example of what the hell I'm talking about, look at this picture from Minecraft:Click

Jaggie heaven. Why? Because it's made up of large pieces. What would help out more here (assuming this isn't the style you're going for), AA or a faster engine that allows for smaller, better built pieces?

For something like telephone wires in the distance you'll never see what AA does on an HDTV. Not like on a monitor. You'll just have to make sacrifices in the engine to get it to work without really noticing it. That horsepower is better put to more polygons and more effects.

The details you can't see aren't really lost - they're just defocused. Usually the human brain is very good at interpreting such data.

What AA does is smooth. What defocusing does is smooth.

For the type of AA people want you will not see on an HDTV. The reason why you're seeing the issue right now is that the engines are cutting corners. A more powerful machine won't have to cut these corners. It'll have more effective ways of doing it than costly AA.

The artist who did the original Duke Nukem box art is my friend. I am biased, but this new box isn't in the same league. A little known fact is he modeled Duke's face after his brother, who now is a lawyer.

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There's also a link in the article for full size images.I wasn't actually trying to prove any argument - some people have problem with jaggies and some don't. I personally play most of my games with AA because I can easily notice it even when I'm sitting far away enough so that I can't make out individual pixels. The reason is simple: The details you can't see aren't really lost - they're just defocused. Usually the human brain is very good at interpreting such data.

Yeah, because a picture the size of my thumb is a good measure. Looking at that little thing from normal distance is still smaller than how I see my TV and I can see jaggies all over the place.

I find this need to "prove" things on this silly. I know a lack of AA is noticeable on an HDTV from 8' away or so because I can tell when there is no AA on an HDTV 8' or so from me. There is no need for research or documents on the matter, I can look at it and know, the proof is seeing it with my own eyes. Infamous was a jaggy mess.

Grumpy Sod wrote on Jan 21, 2011, 17:11:The whole 'why do games still not have AA in' thing was covered a few months ago by someone who clearly knew what they were actually talking about.

The simple fact is that the engine writers (Epic I'm looking at you) chose a method of rendering which renders (ho ho) AA impossible under normal circumstances.

Somehow this has once again been totally forgotten and is being blamed on the game makers or the console makers. I guess there's a certain amount of blame you _could_ apportion on the game makers due to the fact they chose to license a lacking engine, but really it's a stupid pointless whine.

The really sad part is that DX10 allows for AA in UE3 and other such engines, as it allows for differed lighting and AA at the same time. No one except DICE and, ironically, Epic themselves in Gears of War bothers to support DX10 to allow AA though.

Rockstar even made some comment about how they could have had AA in GT4 if they supported DX10 but that they weren't going to bother doing so.